Philobiblon

Yesterday’s thoughts brought me back to the Upper Paleolithic, and most brilliant book that I’ve read in years, The Mind in the Cave, by David Lewis-Williams.

It seeks to understand something of the cave paintings of Europe by considering that anatomically, including in terms of brain structure, the people who painted them were identifical to us. It suggests furthermore that while cultural frameworks have a massive effect on conscious thoughts, the brain when in altered states – induced by drugs, meditation, or even the effect of crawling several kilometres underground in very difficult conditions – behaves in remarkable similar ways across cultures.

Thus, after considering parallel reports of altered states, he suggests that the cave painters believed the walls of at least some caves were thin membranes through which it was possible to touch or draw out the animals from the “underworld”, or otherworld.

This is particularly useful in explaining the quite common effect of paintings being done one on top of the other with no apparent concern for the predecessors. Each painting was an event, not a work of art. Also the way that natural shapes in caves are used in the creation of the image: a bump is a nose, a broken-off piece an ear, etc.

The book also considers the reason why the art developed in Europe and not elsewhere, saying that the single different condition was the presence side by side for a considerable period of anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals. It suggests (and I’m not sure if it doesn’t go a little too far here) that the modern humans realised they had a more complex understanding of religion and the abstract than did their rivals, and therefore sought much harder to develop it.

He focuses particularly on the Chatelperronian Neanderthals, who borrowed techniques of stone tool making, burial and personal ornamentation, apparently from modern humans, but were unable to follow them, he suggests, with advanced hunting techniques, burials with elaborate grave goods and image-making because their minds just could not get around these concepts.

Fascinating stuff!

Reading the Guardian Review review of Imperial Hubris, about militant Islam, I was moved to go back for another look at Malise Ruthven’s A Fury of God: The Islamist Attack on America, which I still think is one of the most original and perceptive approaches to the topic.

Two of the main points that I got out of it are how much radical Islam has been influenced by radical Western thought, from Lenin to the Baader-Meinhof gang, and how its members almost always come from a science/engineering, that is very Western-influenced objectivist educational tradition, which encourages them to read religious texts in a highly literal way.

There’s much more to it than that – it also contains a history of the intellectual tradition that led to al-Qa’ida (yes there is one) – but well, I’d recommend you read the book.

In a broader sense it is a reminder that human nature and the human condition can produce very similar reactions in widely varying circumstances. Indeed, you could probably draw some parallels between some of the radical groups in 1650s England and al-Qa’ida – the Fifth Monarchists are perhaps the best candidates – which brings me to the new novel Havoc in its Third Year, which is being glowingly reviewed everywhere, e.g. the Guardian. It is set in Puritan England, but is being, so far as I’ve seen, universally regarded as a parable for our times.

I bet back in paleolithic Europe there was a group of young men running around destroying cave paintings because they thought they were dangerous perversions … well something like that anyway.

Plus ca change …

can be interesting things.

Mrs Jameson just delivered to me a small card, perhaps two-thirds of a normal personal one, saying:

AN EXCEPTIONAL OCCASION
The Preacher at St. Martin’s
To-morrow, Sunday, October 14th at 11 am,
will be
An Indian Clergyman
the Rev. S.J.B. Bhosle

Someone went to some trouble to print that.

May latest Fall arrived this morning, a two-volume set, Sacred and Legendary Art by Mrs Jameson, 1890 (third edition). For £8 including postage, how could I resist? (In fact there’s a really nice 18th-century book going tomorrow for £45, when on abebooks it’s hundreds of pounds; very tempting.)

Get there behind me Satan! Whoops, you can tell that I’ve been reading, or at least browsing, Mrs Jameson.

Apropos my earlier discussion of how powerful and scholarly women get slandered, here I’ve been seeing how the saints are all beautiful, fair and modest, which is usually what gets them into trouble.

I particularly liked St Filomena, whose remains were found in 1802 in the catacomb of Priscilla in Rome. “The remains, reasonably supposed to be those of one of the early martyrs for the faith, were sealed up and deposited in the treasury of relics in the Lateran; here they remained unthought of. On the return of Pius VII from France, a Neopolitan prelate was sent to congratulate him. One of the priests in his train, who wished to create a sensation in his district, where the long residence of the French had probably caused some decay of piety, begged for a few relics to carry home, and these remains were bestowed on him…. another priest … was favoured by a vision in the broad noon-day, in which he beheld the glorious virgin Filomena, who was pleased to reveal to him that she had suffered death for preferring the Christian faith and her vow of chasitity to the addresses of the emperor, who wished to make her his wife …” (vol II, pp. 672-3)

Finally, Mrs Jameson records, “in the last twenty years” she has become of the most popular saints in Italy. She says dryly: “it is difficult to account for the extension and popularity of this story”. I think I might have to find out more about Mrs Jameson.

I was going to provide a sample of the line drawings of the art in the book, which I assume are also Mrs Jameson’s, but having downloaded “Hello”, as recommended by Blogger, I haven’t got very far. Another day.

… older mothers.

The Hon Georgiana Arstruther (1810-81) gave birth to her first child in January 1862 and twins in December of the same year, having been married at the age of 37.

from J. Lewis, “‘Tis a misfortune to be a great ladie’: Maternal mortality in the British aristocracy,” in The Journal of British Studies, Vol 37, No 1, Jan. 1998, p. 48.

The article argues that aristocratic women’s rate of maternal mortality matched the national average (although contemporaries thought that they were much more likely to die). It says that you might have expected, however, their rate to be lower, given their presumed better nutrition and living conditions; probably their earlier marriages were a factor.

Continuing from Elaine Pagel’s The Gnostic Gospels ….

“The absence of feminine symbolism for God marks Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in striking contrast to the world’s other religious traditions” but the Gnostics were different.

One group believed it had received a secret tradition from Jesus via James to Mary Magdalene. They prayed … “From The, Father, and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, Parents of the divine being …” (p. 71)

Marcus the magician invokes her as Grace (charis) and taught that the wine symbolised his blood. (p. 73)

Others declared her to be the Holy Spirit, or Wisdom, or sometimes she seems to be an earlier goddess, as in the Secret Book of John:

“[The creator] becoming arrogant in spirit, boasted himself over all those things that were below him, and exclaimed, ‘I am father, and God, and above me there is no one.’ But his mother, hearing him speak thus, cried out agains him, ‘Do not lie, Ialdabaoth …”(p. 77)

This seems to have had practical consequences, since at least three heretical groups had women in leadership positions: the Marcionites, Montanists (who honoured Priscilla and Maximilla as founders) and Carpocratians, but after 200 there is no evidence of any such role in the orthodox churchs.

Sometimes this went a long way into true democracy. A congregation in Lyon refused any hierarchy. At each meeting they cast lots (men and women equally) to decide who should be priest, bishop or prophet for the day. They believed by this they were leaving the choice to God. (p. 66)

What a different world it could have been, had the Gnostics won, although (see previous) post, it seems the meek never could inherit the earth.